more “sam and alice”
When he comes home to find her lying on the couch in the dark in the middle of a weekday, the glow of some black-and-white movie on the television washing over her, he knows something’s gone terribly wrong. He’d seen her like this plenty in those first few months after he moved into the apartment, and it had scared him. He’d take a crying, raving, hysterical Alice any day over the girl who sat unmoving on the sofa, listening to Billie Holiday albums on repeat in the dying afternoon light.
And even after she’d moved on, started living whatever shell of a life she’d managed to hang together out of her job at the bookstore and the two or three friends she was still speaking to, he’d never really let his guard down. There had still been this part of him that expected to come home one day to find every bottle in the house emptied, and Alice…
But the last few months had been different, since Maria. Alice was singing again, even fucking around on her guitar like she used to, and not just those fucking suicide-girl ballads. Up-tempo jams, the kind of stuff she used to smirk her way through when they were kids.
He’d actually let himself forget it could get like this until this very moment.
“What are you watching?” he asks, keeping his tone as casual as possible. Sometimes, he remembers, he’d been able to stop it from getting too bad if he caught her at just the right time.
“The Children’s Hour,” she says, drawing her knees into her chest to make room for him on the couch. He sits down in the space she’s made and idly picks up the dvd case on the coffee table, turning it in his hands in an effort to resist the urge to touch her. “Shirley MacLaine is just about to hang herself because she confessed to Audrey Hepburn that she’s in love with her,” Alice continues, her tired eyes glued to the screen.
He sighs deeply. “Are you sure this is the most…productive…use of your time?”
On screen, Audrey discovers the swinging body. Alice switches off the television. “She’s going to find out how much I like her, Sam; she might know already. Either way, I can’t keep thinking about this anymore. It’s driving me crazy.”
“You can’t keep thinking about what?” he asks, and then curses himself for engaging in this line of conversation instead of just making a joke.
“Whether she knows or not, and what she thinks about it, what she thinks about me. And I know she’s straight, ok? I know. But my brain just won’t stop going there. And she keeps doing things that make it more confusing.”
“What happened?” he prods, realizing that they’re in it now, for better or worse.
“We ran into Jess again,” Alice says with a sniffle, and he notices her brushing a tear from her cheek. “And out of nowhere, Maria just…she reached down and held my hand, Sam. And I know that sounds stupid, but it just…it was too much. To be standing there with Jess staring us down, and Maria…rubbing her thumb across the back of my hand. And afterwards she said she did it because she thought that was what I wanted her to do. And what does that even mean?”
She sits up and runs her hands over her face, breathing deeply, and Sam feels himself relax a little. Maybe there’s still a chance she’ll come out of this, he thinks.
“I just can’t be constantly wondering about this all the time; it’s too much,” she continues. “There’s only one thing to do.”
“Well,” he says plainly, getting up from his seat, “do me a favor, and don’t hang yourself before you cut a check for the rent, ok?”
“You have to ask her out.”
The statement stops him cold.
“What are you talking about?” he says, rounding on his heels.
Alice swallows hard, sitting up a little straighter on the couch. “If she’s with you, then…then everything will be settled in my head. There won’t be any room for confusion. She’ll be with you, and that’ll be the end of it. And I won’t have to always be wondering ‘what if.’ And it should be you, Sam. If it can’t be-,” she stops herself, closes her eyes, and swallows again. “I think you’d be good together.”
His cheeks suddenly feel hot, and he wonders if maybe this is anger; it’s been so long since he’s been really angry with her.
“Let me get this straight,” he says, teeth practically clenched. “I have to ask some girl out so that you can be friends with her without having to deal with the fact that you’re secretly in love with her? You’ve gotten me to do some stupid things in our time, Al, but-“
“Don’t you like her?” Alice asks, defensively.
“I don’t know her,” Sam grits out.
He watches as Alice casts her eyes to the floor, her narrow fingers nervously fidgeting along the edge of the couch cushion. It’s the smallest she’s ever looked. He expects her to start crying any second, and when she doesn’t, his anger just packs up and heads for the hills, leaving a colossal headache in its wake. He doesn’t even know what they’re talking about anymore. All he knows is that his whole life, everything he cares about in the world, is sitting there on that couch, wasting away into nothingness before his very eyes. And he can’t just stand there and watch it happen anymore, not again.
And maybe what she’s asking him isn’t all that bad, after all. Maybe she’s right. If neither of them can have what they really want, maybe this is the next best thing.
